Fundings and Exits

Mike Maples Jr. is a prolific angel investor and co-founder of early-stage venture firm Floodgate. Over the years, he’s taken a lot of bets. Some have paid off handsomely (Twitter, Twitch, Lyft and Bazaarvoice, for example). Others have not. I interviewed him for a recent episode of Equity Podcast, and we dug into a number

SaaS founders trying to figure out what it takes to raise their next round can refer to Point Nine’s famous yearly SaaS Funding Napkin. (The term refers to “back of the napkin” plans or calculations.) Now, European hardware deep tech teams have a similar resource from First Momentum, a pre-seed fund investing in technical B2B

Since AI started its historic rise in prominence in 2022, the conversations around how the industry could be regulated have swelled at a similar rate. Many startup founders think regulating the industry now could stifle innovation. But others don’t agree and think waiting to implement policy and regulation could bite the industry down the line.

Running a small business means doing more with less. AI agents can help, but building custom agents for specific workflows remains challenging, even with today’s low-code/no-code tools. The idea behind Enso — which is came out of stealth by announcing a $6 million seed funding round Tuesday — is to give small and medium-sized businesses

Nala, a remittance startup that is now widening its portfolio through a new B2B payments platform, has raised $40 million equity in a rare deal that becomes one of the largest Series A transactions in Africa.  The oversubscribed round was led by San Francisco-based VC firm Acrew Capital, with participation from DST Global, Norrsken22, HOF Capital,

Generative AI businesses aside, the last couple of years have been relatively difficult for venture-backed companies. Very few startups were able to raise funding at prices that exceeded their previous valuations.   Now, approximately two years after the venture slump began in early 2022, some investors, like IVP general partner Tom Loverro, are saying that the

On today’s episode of Equity, we’re taking a look at news you might’ve missed over the holiday weekend here in the U.S., starting with the recent OpenAI security breach. While it doesn’t seem that people have to be too worried about what the hackers actually accessed, the fact that it happened is worth paying attention

Investors are betting on Indian wealthtech startups as a growing middle class turns to diversify investments and startups challenge traditional financial advisors for high-net-worth clients. Premji Invest is in advanced stages of talks to lead a funding round of $30 million to $40 million in Dezerv, an app offering a suite of investment solutions to

Welcome to Startups Weekly — TechCrunch’s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Most interesting startup stories from the week Even seemingly crowded categories can see newcomers climb up the ranks. This includes social media: A new app called

We’re about four months away from TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, taking place October 28 to 30 in San Francisco! We could not bring you this world-class event without our world-class partners — some of the startup ecosystem’s leading tech companies. Why? They show up armed with their expertise, educational resources and connections. They present sessions on

Ashwin Nandakumar and Ashwin Jainarayanan were working on their doctorates at adjacent departments in Oxford, but they didn’t know each other. Nandakumar, who was studying oncology, one day stumbled across a curious dataset for prostate cancer, with which he needed sequencing help. “I reached out to a few friends asking to help me analyze this

Planning to attend TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 with your team? Maximize your team-building time and your company’s impact across the entire conference when you bring your team. Groups of 4 to 9 save 15% on passes, and if you have a group of 10 or more, you can save 30%. Here’s a sneak peek at some

For the past couple of years, innovation has been accelerating in new materials development. And a new French startup called Altrove plans to play a role in this innovation cycle. The deep tech startup has already raised €3.7 million (around $4 million at current exchange rates). If you’re interesting in new materials development, you may

Sophisticated spacecraft often run on shockingly outdated computing systems: consider that the Perseverance rover runs on a PowerPC 750, the processor famous for running on iMacs in the late 1990s.  San Francisco-based Aethero is aiming to bring more powerful computing systems to orbit, and their first payload launches this month on SpaceX’s Transporter-11 rideshare mission.

Raising a Series A round in today’s competitive market can be a daunting task. To equip seed-stage founders with the insights and strategies needed for success, TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 will host a crucial session on the Builders Stage titled “What You Need to Raise a Series A Today.” This session will bring together some of

A group of senators has banded together to urge Synapse’s owners and bank and fintech partners to “immediately restore customers’ access to their money.” As part of their demands, the senators implicated both the partners and investors of the company as being responsible for missing customer funds. In a letter shared publicly on Monday, U.S.

Afloat, a gift delivery app that lets you shop from local stores and have gifts delivered to a loved one on the same day, is now available across the U.S. The startup announced on Monday that it is rolling out its service nationwide after previously only being available in select cities, including Atlanta, Dallas, Charleston, Fort

When Til Klein and Jochen Beutgen came across Gaingels, the U.S.-based syndicate of angel investors backing LGBTQ+ founders, they wondered why there wasn’t a firm looking to do the same for the European LGBTQ+ startup community. Five years later, when a firm like that still didn’t exist, Klein and Beutgen decided they should try to

We live in a very different world since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. With global military expenditure reaching $2.4 trillion last year, startups are hoping to get a share of the pie, and formerly reluctant investors are keen to help them do so. The U.S. budget

Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje‘s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. I just came off recording an episode of Equity, where I learned about the newest wave of stupidity. The tech industry’s DEI allergy has hit a

Adept, a startup developing AI-powered “agents” to complete various software-based tasks, has agreed to license its tech to Amazon and the startup’s co-founders and portions of its team have joined the ecommerce giant. Geekwire’s Taylor Soper first reported the news. According to Soper, Adept co-founder and CEO David Luan will join Amazon, along with Adept

Get ready to unlock the secrets of successful fundraising in the upcoming year at Disrupt 2024. Our featured session, “How to Raise in 2025 if You’ve Taken a Flat, Down, or Extension Round,” is designed to equip startups with the knowledge and strategies needed to navigate the evolving investment landscape. This session will challenge outdated

A travel hack that went viral on TikTok teaches users how to save money on hotels and Airbnbs by booking directly with the properties themselves. Now, a new startup, Directo, will help travelers find those same deals with the help of a Chrome extension that points you to the property’s website, where you’ll often find

Hebbia, a startup using generative AI to search large documents and return answers, has raised a nearly $100 million series B led by Andreessen Horowitz, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.  The round valued the company between $700 – $800 million although TechCrunch couldn’t verify whether that valuation is pre- or post-money.

TechCrunch is joining forces with Google Cloud as its lead partner for Startup Battlefield 200. This event will highlight and support the most promising startups from around the globe at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, which will take place in San Francisco from October 28-30. At the heart of this collaboration is a shared vision of fostering

What is AI good for? Automating repetitive tasks for the very busy people running small businesses, reckons Berlin-based startup Synthflow, which is announcing a $7.4 million seed round for its SME-focused no code platform for AI voice assistance. Since being founded around spring last year, the startup has now banked a total of $9.1 million,

Can chatbots replace human therapists? Some startups — and patients — claim that they can. But it’s not exactly settled science. One study found that 80% of people who’ve used OpenAI’s ChatGPT for mental health advice consider it a good alternative to regular therapy, while a separate report found that chatbots can be effective in

The European Union has announced the winners of a “Large AI Grand Challenge” it kicked off earlier this year in a bid to accelerate the pace of homegrown innovation by large-scale AI model makers. Four startups will share €1 million in prize money and — perhaps more importantly — eight million GPU hours to train

Stability AI, the beleaguered generative AI startup behind Stable Diffusion, has raised new cash. But it won’t reveal how much. Greycroft, Coatue Management, Sound Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, O’Shaughnessy Ventures and angel investors Prem Akkaraju, ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Robert Nelsen and Napster founder and ex-Facebook exec Sean Parker have injected fresh capital into Stability,

In the post-COVID world, VCs say it’s not as easy to get excited about investing in digital health. Deal activity in healthcare IT was relatively flat in Q1 2024 at 74 total deals, valued at about $1 billion total, up only 3% from the year-ago quarter, according to PitchBook data.  Still, promising startups have grabbed